Other than planned restriping to clarify a new merging situation, the recent intersection upgrades at 21st Street and Highway 24 “seem to be working all right.”
This is the impression of Colleen Dawson of Nolte Associates, the project manager, roughly a month after completion of the work. “It's pretty early in the process,”
she said. “We won't do any studies on it for at least six months. We've got to give drivers time to get used to the changes.”
The project, which lasted about six weeks and cost $220,000, mainly involved offsetting the highway left turns to improve visibility, realigning the northbound 21st
right turn lane to eliminate the old sweeping merge onto Highway 24 and adding a second through lane for northbound 21st Street.
The striping need is on the north side of the intersection, where northbound-21st traffic has to merge from two lanes to one before the narrow bridge over Fountain
Creek. “There have been some calls on that,” Dawson said. “The striping on the taper didn't go exactly as planned. It's a small difference, but it seems to be causing
problems for drivers, so we're going back to fix that as soon as possible.”
She noted also that the project intent was not to “cure all ills” at the intersection. A Colorado Department of Transportation Highway 24-widening study calls for a
future interchange at 21st and 24. But local engineers decided a short-term fix was needed when the rate of accidents put it among the city's most dangerous
intersections four years ago and qualified it for Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) safety funds. “We did what we could in the interim to help alleviate
the accident problem, and while we were there we did what we could to help with operations at that signal,” Dawson said.